Showing results by narrator "Paul Hecht" in All Categories

Britain's most esteemed scholar of 16th and 17th century literature, Frank Kermode is also a noted author and professor. In this Modern Library Chronicle, he uses the context of the Elizabethan Era to link each of Shakespeare's plays to their probable years of creation. By portraying the bard's England in terms of its society, economy, and arts, Kermode provides an invaluable guide to understanding Shakespeare?s works.

Before he became one of America's most respected statesmen, Bob Dole was an average citizen serving heroically for his country. The bravery he showed after suffering near-fatal injuries in the final days of World War II is the stuff of legend. Now, for the first time in his own words, Dole tells the moving story of his harrowing experience on and off the battlefield, and how it changed his life.

, is the story of a spontaneous shooting at a Toronto donut franchise, a firefight that leaves a four-year-old boy dead and a crucial eyewitness, an illegal alien, vanished into the night. Ari Greene, the officer in charge of the Tim Hortons shooting struggles to separate the facts of the case from the many conflicting eyewitness accounts. How many shots were fired, and from how many guns? Which witnesses - if any - are reliable? And how to go about tracking down the shooter, who melted into the cold November darkness?

Harry Strand is living a quiet life as an art dealer in Houston. But until four years ago, he was an intelligence agent for the foreign service. His nemesis was Schrade, a ruthless international criminal who arranged the "accident" that killed Harry's wife. Now Harry has met a mysterious, beautiful woman who may have critical information about Schrade. And Harry begins to bait a trap for his enemy. The more Harry learns, however, the more he feels pulled into a much deeper conspiracy.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is a world-renowned scholar, professor of history and geography at Queen Mary, University of London, and a member of the Faculty of Modern History of Oxford University. The Americas, part of the acclaimed Modern Library Chronicles series, offers an intriguing history of the world's western hemisphere.

On Christmas Eve, the holiest of nights for the many Christian peoples of Europe, Adolf Hitler was unleashing the full fury of his remaining Luftwaffe bomber force on Bastogne. For hundreds of German and American soldiers facing off in the siege, the events of Christmas 1944 would destroy any sense of holiness and peace on Earth. For the soldiers on both sides, and for the brave people of Bastogne, this would be no silent night.

Professor George Edward Challenger summons 3 friends to his home with a strange request: bring your own oxygen. The even stranger reason: Challenger has discovered the Earth is about to pass through a poisonous belt of ether, and all living things are destined to die unless they can protect themselves. Can the 4 men's small supply of oxygen last until the Earth clears the poison belt?

Alistair Horne is a leading scholar of French history. Here he trains his sights on one of the most compelling figures of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte. Far from a mere dictator, Napoleon was a military, political and social visionary whose legacy can still be felt in France and all over the world. Horne examines the one-time emperor at his most human, from his greatest triumphs to his disastrous failures.

In a rare New York appearance, the beloved British author of Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat, the funny, romantic and surprising paired novels about a 50-year marriage between a crusty British barrister and his sparkling surprising Betty, discusses these books and Last Friends, her brand-new third chapter in this remarkable series. Paul Hecht will read from the book. In conversation with Stacy Schiff ( Cleopatra).

A journalist bearing terrible news leaps from a still-moving train into a small town of wonderful, impossible secrets.... The doomed crew of a starship follows their blind, mad captain on a quest into deepest space to joust with destiny, eternity, and God imself.... Now and Forever is a bold new work from an incomparable artist whose stories have reshaped America's literary landscape.

Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld and his colleagues at the University of Regensburg's Institute of Romance Philology pride themselves on their unwavering commitment to intellectual excellence. They know it is their job to protect a certain civilised approach to the scholarly arts. So when a new deputy librarian, Dr Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler, threatens to drag them all down a path of progressive inclusivity, they are determined to stop her in the name of scholarship - even if that requires von Igelfeld to make the noble sacrifice of running for director of the Institute.

The Holy Bible With Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha: Contemporary English Version published by the American Bible Society. Includes 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, and 4 Maccabees.

Anna Starling flees a dissolving marriage in California to save herself and her artistic career, and rents a house in the isolated landscape of Cape Breton. There, her life intersects with that of her neighbor Red Murdock, a cabinetmaker who has recently lost Rosaire, the great love of his life, to cancer. Surrounded by the old ghosts of this landscape and the echoes of the indigenous Scottish culture that once lived in this isolated community, Anna and Murdock slowly come together just as the modern world encroaches on their town.

Peter Behrens' eagerly awaited second novel is The O’Briens. In the character of Joe O’Brien - ambitious railroad magnate and industrialist, fiercely loyal family man, brooding troubled soul - he gives us one of the most compelling and complex characters to come along in years. A brilliant follow-up to The Law of Dreams, and yet standing masterfully on its own, The O’Briens is a tragic, romantic, and ultimately hopeful epic of great heart, imagination and narrative force.

Louis Begley creates multi-faceted characters that come to life under the spell of his crystalline prose. Returning his readers to the wealthy and privileged world of About Schmidt, he introduces them, this time, to an especially poignant protagonist. “A happy man, as the world goes,” Thomas Mistler feels an odd sense of liberation now that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. This hard-driving Madison Avenue mogul suddenly has an excuse to live for the moment. But spending time alone in Venice is not the free-wheeling, self-indulgent experience he had hoped for.

Experience one of the most popular adventure stories of all time with Conan Doyle's favorite fictional character, Professor George Edward Challenger. Challenger leads a four-man scientific expedition to an isolated South American region where, according to legend, dinosaurs and other Jurassic Era life forms still flourish. The intrepid scientists, eager to make historic discoveries, find themselves face to face with their own ancestors, threatening their pilgrimage and their lives.

Hockey forms the backdrop of our lives. For many Canadians, the big moments - births, deaths, marriages, moves - are all mixed up with the wins and losses of our teams. The voices of Hockey Night in Canada sportscasters are our soundtrack, and visions of skates scraping across the ice lull us to sleep. George Bowering, Canada's former poet laureate, is no different.

Arthur and Jake are the sons of a farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming. Arthur is solid and dutiful, set to inherit the farm and his father's character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know.

On the morning of his divorce trial, multi-millionaire Quentin Wyler is found dead on his kitchen floor. Detective Ari Greene arrives minutes before the press, who are obsessed by Wyler's affair with a Hollywood starlet. Hours after the funeral, Wyler's ex-wife is charged with murder. But what should be a straightforward guilty plea turns into a complex murder trial, and leaves a trail of unanswered questions in its aftermath.

Three men - an American infantry captain in World War II, an Israeli-born dealer in art stolen by the Nazis, and a pioneering psychiatrist in fin-de-siècle Budapest - find their carefully wrought lives turned upside down by three women. A mystery: Where does the worth of people and its treasures truly lie? What is the value of a gift when giver and recipient have been lost - of a love offering when the beloved is no more?